What is Emerging?

The winter 2021 issue of LCWR’s “Occasional Papers,” entitled “God’s Infinite Vision,” is dedicated to our call to see the world as God sees it. Gabriele Uhlein’s article* “Collectively Seeking the Emerging New” shares with us a “collective presencing practice” creating a sacred space for the Holy to emerge.

Gabriele writes, “How might we explore the urgent need to see with a perspective that takes us beyond the boundaries of ourselves and what we think we know?” She then takes us on a heart journey, the collective presencing practice. Gabriele explains this is not only the experience of me with you, but also the feeling of a shared “we” space. When we are integrally (completely and undistractedly) present, it becomes possible to sense an invisible and delicate something that surrounds and permeates us. This happens with a different intelligence that is accessible via a conscious shift from the mind to the heart in a new way. We become still, open to silence and drop into the heart, feeling into the space around us. What arise are emotions, intuitive prompts, glimpses of wisdom that awe us and startle us out of our assumptions. We begin noticing the delicate, unifying shared space between us and around us. This experience is not at all mental, but a sensing of an aliveness that offers us a sacred space for the unknown Holy to emerge.

To be open to this experience, Gabriele talks about the necessity of “dying together before we die,” an experience that disillusions us of what we think we know so that we can be open to what is newly emerging. Another name for this practice is metanoia (to change our hearts), which Kim Klein shared with us at the third Lenten Reflection Hour.

We invite you to join us in entering into this practice of collective presencing. What has to die in us to create the space needed for the unknown Holy to emerge? If we in the Loretto Community practiced this contemplative experience, how would it change me/ us? We welcome your reflections if you wish to share them with us. Thank you.

*LCWR’s “Occasional Papers,” Winter 2021, article by Gabriele Uhlein OSF, pages 3-5. Used with permission.